FEATURE ARTICLES

Developed around the concept of a ‘village campus’, Sycamore is a new medium secure facility at the heart of the £60 m redevelopment of Northgate Hospital in Morpeth, Northumberland, which provides a wide variety of indoor and outdoor settings for relaxation and activity, relieving boredom, and addressing the risk of challenging behaviours and poor physical health. Paul Yeomans, director at Medical Architecture, reports.

Safehinge Primera’s new radar patient safety aid designed for bedrooms and bathrooms, with no blindspots, aims to help save lives and improve the quality of care in mental health. Philip Ross, the company’s CEO, explains the background to, and thinking behind, the co-production and development of what its dubs ‘the first and only ethical patient safety aid’ – Project X.

Robin Graham, an architect at Gilling Dod Architects, who oversees many of the practice’s flagship mental health projects, reports on its design of a new 54-bedded adult and older adult inpatient facility currently under construction for Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in an undulating hillside setting near Bexhill in East Sussex. ‘True co-production’ has, he explains, had a key role.

A webinar held in mid-April focused on the importance of the DiMHN and BRE’s Informed Choices testing standard as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of a range of products used in mental healthcare settings, and highlighted some of the considerable potential benefits for users. The Network reports.

Nafeesa Arshad, Digital Art School Producer, and Haley Moyse Fenning, Head of Impact, at Hospital Rooms, discuss the intersection of mental healthcare and art. They highlight some of the charity’s current art installations, ‘the transformative impact of integrating creativity in mental healthcare facilities’, and the impact of the Hospital Rooms Digital Art School initiative, now re-launching, on bringing creative intervention to mental health service-users.

The Scottish Prison Service has recently partnered with Holmes Miller Architects to design and build a ground-breaking new facility for women in custody in Scotland on its existing Cornton Vale site in Stirling, central Scotland. With custodial learning ‘a new focus’ for the DiMHN, David Gardner, Project director at Holmes Miller, a speaker at next month’s DiMH 2024 conference, reports.

With a renewed focus on co-production and inclusion in mental health, Hannah Chamberlain recently met up with Day Two keynote presenter* at next month’s DiMH 2024 conference, Dolly Sen – an artist, author, and activist, who uses her lived experience ‘to challenge, poke fun at, and interrogate’ the mental health system. The DiMHN CEO reports on an interesting discussion.

Located at Brooklands Hospital in Solihull, the Onyx Unit is a new, purpose-built, seven-bedded facility to support person-centred clinical assessments and interventions for patients with autism in a low secure setting.

Social value is now an essential requirement for construction businesses to make a positive impact in society, property and construction company, EDGE, says.

The Global head of Products at Pineapple Contracts, which designs and manufactures furniture for challenging environments, explains how a request from a Trust experiencing damage to its dining room furniture led it to develop its rotationally moulded Ryno range.

Two US architects explain how, having both experienced mental health challenges, they were ‘drawn to sketching as a designer’s preferred medium for defining problems and driving solutions with pen and paper’.

Mark Stefan, director of landscape architecture and planning practice, Design with Nature, outlines the principal characteristics of the Contemplative Landscape Model which forms the core of the book, Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces

Nationwide Children’s has built the US’s largest freestanding, full-service psychiatric facility on its children’s hospital campus in Columbus, Ohio.

A well-attended online Design in Mental Health Network 2023 AGM in November saw the Network’s Workstreams report on a busy year

A collaboration between Lincoln Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Dutch company, Recornect, has resulted in a new, accessible media and communication solution for seclusion, de-escalation, and other rooms within the Trust’s medium-security units

Louis Sullivan, Principal architect at leading healthcare construction specialist, Darwin Group, explains how the firm’s ‘Bedroom Evolved’ has, as it puts it, ‘set a new bar for mental health accommodation standards’.

Drawing on Scandinavian mental healthcare projects, Arkitema’s Stence Guldager argues that early selection and involvement of the artist, and giving the artist the maximum creative freedom, are key to ensuring that art installations have the optimal impact.

Max Szczerkowski, Product Design engineer at Safehinge Primera, explains the background to, and thinking behind, the launch of what the company says is ‘the ultimate electronic lockset’ for mental healthcare bedrooms.

Teva Hesse, Design director at 4D Studio Architects, explores whether ‘designing out risk’ in inpatient mental healthcare facilities means service-users having little to do, and suggests giving them greater individual empowerment to engage in meaningful pursuits.

The University of Dublin’s Harry Kennedy had substantial input into the design of the country’s new National Forensic Mental Health Service Hospital in Portrane, and here discusses his thinking on optimal forensic mental healthcare